Making your own 2600 Atari Carts

So, you want to make your own Atari Carts?  First off, you are nuts.  There are plenty of good games on the market to go buy.  Ok, at least I tried to make you stop.

Here's what you need:

1 -Atari 4K (or higher) cartridge (you will know when you have one because there are 24 little copper contacts on the board.  If you look inside a Combat or Bowling cart, you will see there are only 23 (1 is left blank).  These will not work the way you want them to).

1-Eprom burner (if you get into game repair, an indispensable tool to have.  You can make speed up chips, multi-shot chips, upgrade tracks and mazes, make carts, amaze your friends, well, ok, amaze the people I know anyway!).  I suggest looking around on the internet.  I went with the Xtronics.com Pocket Programmer 2.  I have had to replace the power supply (cheapo Radio Shack jobby),  but it still works after thousands of chips. You will also want an eraser (basically a fancy blacklight in a nifty little case).  This erases all you boo-boos and cleans those dirty chips you bought on ebay to save a buck.

1-Soldering iron.  Cheapo from Radio Shack works great.  Not the trigger type, mind you.

1-Desoldering iron.  Not absolutely necessary, but a big time saver.  I use mine all the time (looks like a soldering iron with a turkey baster on the end; sucks up all that unwanted solder).

1-2532 Eprom

1-24 Pin IC socket (Again, not necessary, but I would recommend it.  This way, you can make one cart and change the chip whenever you want.  There are sockets called ZIF (or Zero Insertion Force) that will let you easily change the chips.  Somewhat tricky to find, but they are out there)

1-74LS04 (or 7404) Hex Inverter (Technically, there are more than one inverter in the 7404 chip.  We will only be using 4 of the 14 legs on the chip)

1-roll of good Electronics solder (not that cheap stuff from Home Depot; I have seen solder that?s like an 8th of  an inch around.  Crazy.  Get the skinny PCB solder from Radio Shack I use part number 64-013E, just FYI)

NOTE:

The simplest games to make are 2K or 4K in size.  4K is the largest ?chunk? the 2600 can see, and the easiest to make.  If you will look at a 2600 cartridge PCB, there are 24 legs on it. Those correspond directly to the legs on a 2532 eprom (carts can also be made using a 2732 eprom, but traces on the board must be cut and changed; stick with the 2532).  The only exception is that leg 20 must be run through a hex inverter (a chip that ?inverts? the logic signal).  The 74LS04 is the best for this, but I have always used 7404?s with no trouble at all.  Both chips are available in most electronic supply houses, or can be ordered on the web from www.atariage.com or www.mcminone.com.

I will assume you know how to solder/desolder.  If not, go practice.  Working on 20 year old chips and boards is not the ideal practice place.  Take apart and old clock radio and practice taking stuff off and putting it back on.  It does not take long to get the hang of it, and in no time, you?ll be ready for the carts!

Enough Already, lets make carts!

First, you need to go to the web and get the ROM you wish to use.  I would suggest going to atariage.com or asking around to find the game you are looking for.  Once you have it, you may want to test it in an emulator and make sure you have a working ROM.  The ROM IS the game code.  In an arcade, there will be many ROMS to make a game, for the Atari 2600, it?s a single ROM that is 2K, 4K, 8K, 16K (even up to 32K!!!) in size.  Remember:  2532 chips hold EXACTLY 4K of game.  You can?t put a bigger game in there, just won?t fit.  Trust me, we have all tried! :)

Use your Eprom burner to put the ROM onto the chip.  I suggest burning the chip a few times.  Wiggle it around in the socket and burn it again.  Can?t hurt to be careful.  Sometimes the little legs of the chips get dirty and don?t take the program right away.  Hey, its old!

I would now suggest desoldering the ROM (that is the chip on the old cartridge).  They make lousy bookmarks, doorstops, or paper holders, so I would love to know what use you find for them.  I have bags of them, and just don?t have the heart to throw them away.  Once you remove the chip (paying attention to the direction it goes on; there is a little notch in the EPROM that shows you which end pin 1 is on and there is a mark on the ROM pointing out the same), you can install the socket.  Everything goes just like you would expect EXCEPT PIN 20! Bend that one up and out of the way.  We will be connecting a wire to the hole in the board, and a wire to that little leg.  Solder down the other 23 legs, and then connect a piece of wire to PIN 20, and also a piece to the hole that you left open.  Now, I usually connect two more pieces of wire.  One goes to pin 12 on the EPROM (that is ground) and also one to pin 24 (that is +5 Volts).

The hex inverter (74LS04 or 7404) is usually hard to hold down.  I put a little tape across it to keep it from moving when I solder it.  Now you are going to connect the wires you have to it.  The wire from pin 12 (remember that is ground) goes to leg 7 on the inverter.  Next, the wire from pin 24 (+5 Volts) goes to pin 14 on the inverter.  The inverter now has power, but needs the signal to invert.  Connect the wire from the hole on the board to pin 1, and connect pin 20 from the EPROM to pin 2 on the inverter.

If you have done it right, you now have a working cart.  Go test it out.  The EPROM side goes up, by the way, when you plug it in.  If all is well, pop it back in a case and show your friends what you made!!.  If you are using a ZIF socket, cut a hole in the cartridge case so it can stick out.  You can use my LABEL if you would like?

Any questions?  Email me!